IE8 suddenly opening on MSN page

Hi everyone,

I'm running Windows 7 Home Premium and IE8. My home page on IE8 is set to "blank". However, on launching IE8 today, it's automatically opening an MSN page, and the toolbar at the top of the screen is blurred.

I haven't made any changes to the IE8 settings, so can anyone throw any light on what is going on here?

No I haven't done any changes to Windows or to the browser.

I suppose I could download and install IE9. Would that solve the problem? Are there any problems/issues with IE9 that I should be aware of? I've been in hospital for the past 6 months until a few days ago, so I'm a bit out of touch with such things.

Sometimes software installation packages can change homepages, add toolbars etc.
If the toolbar (which you speaketh of :)) is blurred or greyed out, and you want to change it, I think you can do so in another way.
Go to Control Panel > Network and Internet > Change your Homepage. You should see that MSN page there, change it to whatever. If you leave it blank maybe that will work.

This is getting stranger. When I launched the browser today, it asked me if I wanted to upgrade to IE9. As I'd been thinking about going this anyway, I told it to go ahead, but nothing happened. When I did a help|about, it indicated that I was already running IE9!

On checking the list of installed programs in Control Panel, there is no version of IE listed at all! Is that as it should be?

As far as the browser window is concerned, I've set up the toolbars I want and reset the home page, but I'm still seeing a blurred version of the icons toolbar behind the current URL bar and the open tabs bar. I installed Firefox but this strange blurred icons bar is also visible on the Firefox window as well.

So I'm thoroughly confused. Any further thoughts would be welcomed!

On checking the list of installed programs in Control Panel, there is no version of IE listed at all! Is that as it should be?

Yes, that is how it should be.

As far as the browser window is concerned, I've set up the toolbars I want and reset the home page, but I'm still seeing a blurred version of the icons toolbar behind the current URL bar and the open tabs bar. I installed Firefox but this strange blurred icons bar is also visible on the Firefox window as well.

Please provide an image of that toolbar. To take a screenshot, press the print screen key on your keyboard, this will save the image in your clipboard.

OK, here's an image of the browser window:



I hope someone can make sense of this! Thanks for your help so far.

Those icons are showing through because you have transparency enabled. Have you changed you homepage yet?